According to acceleration company Strangeloop, utilizing Google Chrome reduces webpage download times by 10% to 20% if the sites use Google’s fast Web protocol.

Support for Google’s SPDY has been added to Strangeloop’s Site Optimizer appliances as well as its Web acceleration service, making download times even faster than they are with Site Optimizer alone. – Strangeloop President Joshua Bixby.

One Strangeloop customer’s homepage that is fronted by Site Optimizer downloads in 7.8 sec with IE7. The numbers are 5.5 seconds for IE8, 4.9 seconds for IE9, 4.9 seconds for Firefox 3.6, and 4 seconds for Chrome 10. With SPDY in use, the Chrome 10 speed would drop another 10% to 20% going by Bixby. That would make the download speed for the page 3.2 seconds to 3.6 seconds. Google’s SPDY site claims the protocol has cut back page load times by as much as 65%.

Strangeloop is the first company to throw such extensive commercial support behind the protocol. Since SPDY requires support at the server end of Web connections, widespread use of the protocol would require vendors of routers, load balancers and any other device that might terminate browser sessions to also support SPDY. – Bixby

Being passionate about software, Armin joined FavBrowser.com in early 2011 and has been actively writing ever since. Having accepted the challenge, he also enjoys watching anime, indulging in good books, staying fit and healthy, and trying new things.

HTTP pipelining requires both the client and the server to support it. HTTP/1.1 conforming servers are required to support pipelining. This does not mean that servers are required to pipeline responses, but that they are required not to fail if a client chooses to pipeline requests.